State officials tried and failed to execute Christa Pike. She is now in critical condition, her lawyers said Thursday.

For months before the state of Tennessee planned to execute Christa Pike, she and her attorneys worried that the lethal injection could go wrong.

In court filings and in multiday hearings, they challenged the state’s existing protocols, raising fears that she could endure undue suffering and that a blood disorder and her small veins might cause complications.

They cited another botched execution in the state in May. They suggested an alternative form of execution, such as firing squad or hanging. Each time, the requests were rejected.

But those fears appeared to play out inside the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution on Wednesday night, when Tennessee officials tried to inject Pike with deadly drugs that ultimately did not kill her.

She “was very concerned that this execution would go exactly the way it ended up coming out,” one of Pike’s attorneys, Stephen Ferrell, told reporters Thursday. “Tennessee should not be torturing its citizens in the name of justice.”

As he spoke, Pike lay in a hospital bed, still alive more than a day after she was to have been executed for the brutal murder of Colleen Slemmer in 1995, when they were teenagers.

Randy Spivey, another one of Pike’s attorneys, said she remained in critical condition and was “receiving lifesaving medical care,” but added that the full ramifications for her health were still not clear.

It was hardly the only question that loomed Thursday, as Tennessee officials confronted intense scrutiny over what went wrong and how the state had botched two executions this year.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) on Thursday halted executions in the state and ordered an investigation into the incident, saying he was “highly disappointed” by what happened.

“The people of Tennessee have determined that capital punishment is the appropriate sentence for the most heinous of crimes,” Lee said. The state’s residents “expect that those sentences will be carried out in a manner that is not only legal and constitutional, but effective,” he said. “And that didn’t happen.”

He insisted that as far as he knew, the Department of Correction had followed the state’s approved protocol “exactly” as outlined and that such an approach had proved effective more than 100 times around the country.

“There is no reason to expect it to not work. But something didn’t go well, or right, last night,” Lee said. “And we need to find out why.”

The failed execution led to outrage and criticism from supporters and opponents of the death penalty alike, and it revived a feverish debate about the methods used to carry out death sentences in the United States.

Executions are far less common nationwide than they were a few decades ago, with a relatively small share of states accounting for most of them. But officials in states that carry out death sentences have struggled in some high-profile incidents in recent years, including failing to insert intravenous lines and using the wrong drug.

Pike, 50, is the only woman on Tennessee’s death row. Had she been executed Wednesday, Pike would have been the only woman put to death in the state in more than two centuries.

She had lived on death row for more than 30 years after her conviction for helping to murder Slemmer in Knoxville, Tennessee. According to court records, when Pike was 18, she and two other teenagers lured Slemmer into a wooded area and tortured and killed her.

In court filings earlier this year, Pike’s attorneys had pointed to recent history in challenging her lethal injection, highlighting the state’s failed attempt in May to execute Tony Carruthers, a convicted murderer, at the same Nashville prison. Officials struggled with inserting an IV line, his execution was called off, and he was given a one-year reprieve.

Pike had also sought clemency from Lee, arguing that her history as a victim of sexual assault was not properly considered in the case and asking that her sentence be changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Lee rejected her clemency request days before the scheduled execution, and multiple courts also allowed it to move forward.

On Thursday, Pike’s attorneys described harrowing events on Wednesday night that they said were marked by missteps and a lack of communication.

Spivey said the prison’s execution team spent an hour trying to establish an IV line, a stretch during which Pike both tried to help them and also expressed how painful the process was.

“I counted at least seven needles used in her left arm alone, one of which appeared to be bent when it was pulled from her arm,” Spivey told reporters.

He recounted how he sought to communicate with the rest of Pike’s legal team outside the prison 40 minutes after the first dose of lethal drugs was administered, when she was clearly still alive.

But it took several minutes to make it to a phone to contact them, Spivey said, and more time before he got confirmation that an ambulance was on the way.

“Last night was not just inefficient. It was cruel, and it was torturous. It was also predictable,” Spivey said. “Christa’s legal team told the state of Tennessee and the courts that her medical conditions would cause her to suffer an agonizing death. The state and the court dismissed Christa’s concerns.”

The accounts from Pike’s attorneys were in line with media witnesses, who described a chaotic, confusing and largely obscure scene Wednesday night. Numerous witnesses said officials kept closing a curtain to the death chamber, leaving reporters and Pike’s attorneys literally in the dark.

“No one knew what was going on behind that curtain,” Spivey said, emphasizing that Pike’s legal team still did not know whether she was given medical care before 8:50 p.m. local time, when state officials confirmed they had called an ambulance.

May Martinez, Slemmer’s mother, had also traveled to Tennessee with her husband to witness the execution. Attempts to reach her on Thursday were unsuccessful.

But Martinez told NBC News that she was furious with state officials, calling what happened “a mess” and saying they failed to properly communicate with her. She also said Pike expressed no remorse about Slemmer’s killing when she appeared in the death chamber. “Not nothing … about what happened, you know, to Colleen,” Martinez said.

Spivey said in the hours leading up to the planned execution, Pike had said repeatedly “how awful this must be for Ms. Slemmer’s mother. She was aching for that,” Spivey said. “I cannot imagine what this has been like for the family of Ms. Slemmer, for anyone who loves that family and is close to that family.”

A flurry of court filings and rulings had marked the hours leading up to Wednesday’s planned execution, with a federal appeals court temporarily pausing it in the morning, hours before Pike was scheduled to die. By nightfall, the U.S. Supreme Court had lifted the stay — and the state moved forward with the execution before Pike’s death warrant expired at midnight.

Pike’s attorneys have said officials tried to inject two doses of lethal drugs into Pike before the execution was called off. Among the many unanswered questions that remained Thursday was how much of the drugs made it into her system before the effort was aborted.

Under Tennessee’s protocol, which was adopted in January 2025 following a different death-penalty review ordered by Lee, the state uses the drug pentobarbital to carry out lethal injections.

The written protocol describes two sets of syringes for executions, with one serving as a backup if the condemned survives the first dose. There is no language detailing further dosages.

In a statement after the attempted execution, the Tennessee Department of Correction said it “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol.”

“The lethal injection chemical in the protocol has consistently been effective, and the protocol does not allow for additional procedures beyond what was carried out this evening,” the department said.

There has been a significant decline in capital punishment across much of the country in recent decades, even as there was a sharp increase last year, driven in large part by a surge of executions in Florida.

There were 47 executions carried out nationwide last year, the most since 2009, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks capital punishment. The tally this year will almost certainly be lower.

A decreasing number of states have been carrying out fewer executions each year, and death sentences have also significantly declined. A significant share of people on death row nationwide were sentenced decades ago, and many are likely to die without being executed, according to a 2024 Washington Post analysis.

Death penalty opponents excoriated the botched execution in Nashville, saying it further shows the punishment’s inherent cruelty.

“How can anyone who witnessed what happened in Tennessee last night claim that executions are constitutional or humane?” Maya Foa, chief executive of Reprieve, a human rights group, said in a statement.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), who is running to succeed Lee as governor, said a different method of execution should be used instead.

“While there should be a thorough review of what happened and why the process failed, the answer is simple: bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly,” she said in a statement.

Though it remains unclear precisely what failures took place in Nashville this week, during some previous lethal injections, there have been issues with inserting IVs and delivering the drugs.

Idaho authorities in 2024 halted the attempted execution of a then-73-year-old serial killer after they were unable to insert an intravenous line to deliver the lethal injection drugs.

In 2014, Oklahoma officials were attempting an execution, but the inmate writhed and grimaced on the gurney before the lethal injection was called off. He died less than an hour later of a heart attack. A review later found problems with the IV’s insertion, and officials said that the vein had collapsed, with drugs being absorbed into surrounding tissue or leaking out.

Pike’s attorneys said they have not been able to see her or speak with her since she was hospitalized, and they were hesitant to speculate on what exactly happened during the lethal injection.

After the second dose of pentobarbital was injected, Spivey said, he saw her arm turning purple. Media witnesses also said they heard Pike complain about arm pain. Attorneys for Pike said it was their understanding that she has blistering and burning around the injection site.

Medical experts had warned before the lethal injection that Pike’s small veins and blood disorder could lead to a condition known as “IV infiltration,” when fluids leak into surrounding tissue rather than the vein itself, Ferrell said.

On Thursday, Spivey appeared shaken by what he had watched unfold and what it had forced people to confront.

“As a citizen of Tennessee, this is something that was done in all of our names,” he said. “I am haunted by last night.”